“Switch off from Archers’ victim Helen and you’re no better than those who ignore domestic abuse in real life”

Confused that Helen is the victim here, when it was Rob who was stabbed?

You are supposed to be; this Archers’ storyline has been linked to by every journalist following the two cases of ‘coercive control’ sentenced over the past week.

Sam Williams was given an eighteen months suspended sentence for, amongst other things, ‘continuously belittling the victim, telling her what to wear, and how to get her hair cut’. Mohammed Anwaar was jailed for 12 months for deciding what his girlfriend should eat, and making her take exercise in order to look like Kim Kardashian. (His sentence was more severe in light of additional offences of physical assault).

This element of the ‘coercive control’ of Helen, according to Polly Neate, is what we should be concentrating on – because ‘it is the heart of domestic abuse’ and ‘two women a week are killed by a partner or former partner in England and Wales‘ – which must rank as one of the most disingenuous sentences, in a crowded field, written this year.

It is a ‘Neate‘ trick. (See what I did there?) for a start Helen wasn’t killed by a partner – she was the one who stabbed her partner, Rob. Secondly, although it is true that two women a week are killed by a partner or former partner, that is to omit the fact that actually three individuals a week are killed by a partner or former partner…and the other ‘one’ is a man killed by a woman, just as Rob almost was.

So what Polly Neate has done is take a mere third of the potential cases to look at, and used it as an vehicle to list the possible excuses for what Helen has done.

“They do not understand why women like Helen may be driven to attack men like Rob”.

The other two thirds of cases where men like Rob stab women like Helen are apparently easily explained away by the fact that they are men, congenital brutes…

The country is not littered with hostels where men can get away form controlling and coercive women. Women who choose their clothes for them; control what they eat; belittle them for failing to look like the ‘Hof’.

Apart from the police station, there are few other places for them to go to for safety; most refuges are *NOT designed and intended for homeless males.

Surprisingly, you are more at risk of being battered to death by the ‘little woman’ in your life, if you live in Cornwall. Four out of the last five ‘deaths at the hands of partners’ were men. Only in the last year has a refuge opened in Cornwall which looks after men.

Sue McDermott from the refuge said that in its first year, they came into contact with 80 men experiencing domestic violence and housed 11 men in desperate situations.

She said: ‘What we try to explain to professionals in the field is that it’s not the size of the man that means they couldn’t defend themselves; often they’ve got values which means they won’t hit back’.

Peter Clinch, whose brother Alan was stabbed to death by his wife with a pair of scissors in 2012, said: ‘Men feel embarrassed – ashamed that they’ve been driven out the home by the wife or partner.

Irish women can be just as violent as Cornish women, according to ‘Amen‘. Yet the Gardai do not even keep a record of the number of male victims, according to a question asked in parliament by Pearse Doherty, the Sinn Féin politician.

You might have expected the ‘hard men’ of Belfast to want to keep quiet about their fellow man being beaten up by mere shrimps of women, but it seems they have more courage than, say, the Council of Europe, whose coyly worded ‘Istanbul convention‘ speaks only of violence against women – ‘and domestic violence’.

The crime that dare not speak its name…

The ‘Mankind Initiative‘ produces some helpful facts and figures for journalists writing about domestic abuse – not that I have found any journalist keen to reproduce their horrifying guesstimate of 2.2 million men having suffered domestic abuse during their lifetime.

A few years ago, there was an influential advertisement with the caption: ‘It’s a crime to beat a woman’. As it is to beat a man. Men, like the proverbial ‘vulnerable little woman’, often don’t fight back – partly because cultural prejudice against hitting a woman can be deeply ingrained, partly because they are well aware of their own strength and that they could inflict far more damage should they retaliate, and partly because of the shame attached to being a ‘hen-pecked husband’. They don’t always report the crime either, because they fear being laughed at by the ‘hard men’ at the local police station.

Sometimes they are not physically capable of reporting the crime; we hear much from the feminists regarding ‘power imbalance’, and have been groomed to believe that this is all about little slips of young girls being bullied by shed-sized gym fanatics. It can happen the other way round too.

Suzanne Edmondson, a fit and healthy 49-year-old, pinned the 90-year-old man she was supposed to be caring for down, swearing at him and striking him in the face. She then picked the man up and threatened to put him outside in the rain. Fortunately someone saw her and called the police.

She got two years and eight months in jail – so presumably she is one of the women that Michael Gove is offering to reform the prison service for:

Now the plight of poor, vulnerable Helen Archer, is being used to reinforce the case for reform:

Gove said: “We need radically to reform how we treat women offenders. At the moment, too many women are in jail. A prison sentence not only punishes them, but also makes life much tougher for their children.”

Seems that women are cast into the role of victim, regardless of which end of the rolling pin they are on…

As habitually sharp this Monday morning as you always are after a week end Anna. I guess every one here will have known abusive relationships and how they can totally blight a life. I really do question if legislation…..particularly legislation in the form it has taken ….is the appropriate method to resolve close interpersonal relationships. I confess I have relatively little professional experience of involvement in personal relationships of this sort save in the Family Division but have some personal knowledge of such relationships. The key I have always thought is for the oppressed to sever connection with the oppressor whatever the cost but they, for reasons that remain opaque, so rarely do. I have heard Stockholm syndrome mentioned in this context and of course Moth and Candle and Snake and Rabbit but it doesn’t appear to me be a satisfactory general explanation. Before any legislation was put in place to address the effects I think greater thought should have been given to the causes …..both within the context of the oppressor but also the oppressed. At the wire though everyone has to take responsibility for the personal relationships they enter into ….no different from financial relationships …..the value of a financial investment can go up or down …..There does sometimes come a time when one ceases to throw good money after bad if one is wise. That is personal judgement and personal responsibility …..and I think its a mistake to think one can legislate criminally (save in clear cases of physical or mental incapacity) the problem away. OOOOPS gotta sign off quick I hear my wife coming down the stairs

After reflection I observe that strangely the Family Division is disinterested in ‘fault’ in Divorce Proceedings but the Criminal Division has taken on some aspects of the notion. Perhaps if civil proceedings were more affordable and accessible (contempt proceedings would give adequate teeth) then the Police/CPS would not get involved in personal relationships ….makes me wonder if the CPS lawyers shouldn’t be transferred to a specialist non criminal free domestic violence service linked to each County Court ……probably cheaper and more effective than the blunt instrument of the Criminal Law

I’m not sure it would be right to side-step the Police/CPS channel, after all one person has committed a violent act on another – whether they were in a relationship or not, that’s still a crime and should still attract a penalty on proven guilt, blunt though the criminal law may be. If the case is passed to a civil area or some other specialist ‘domestic’ forum, then the violent one may pick up the message that it’s really OK to assault someone if they’re your partner because there is no criminal penalty likely, which may actually make the problem worse.

I think most couples have had a highly charged barny, even Elton John. I think unless it’s really getting out of hand involving plod or more probably plonk will just make matters more acrimonious. Also what is controlling behaviour? We don’t have much money, so I ask the Mrs not to spend too much on clothes as we go into debt, is this controlling?

@Mudplugger I am with you on the notion that violence against another should be sanctioned ultimately by criminal penalty if that is what is necessary but as we both agree criminal law is a blunt instrument …..my concern is that one or other of two parties reaches for criminal sanction as the most easy and cheapest way to address an issue and that might escalate or at least distort matters by placing them in a ‘do or die’ criminal procedure setting. What worries me a bit is that agents of the state (viz the Police and the CPS) look for resolution within the criminal law rather than resolution within civil proceedings. Further some of the oppressed may take the view that so long as they threaten the other party with the Police they will behave and things can carry on when what is needed is the ‘break’ between the parties either temporarily or permanently I think we have all seen controlling behaviour and understand what it is but proving it (assuming proper rules of criminal evidence) is quite another matter. How easy is it to shake the evidence of someone intimidated/controlled by the other party? A Barrister or Solicitor recieves instructions and it is not to him to question them

There’s not a clear-cut answer, if only because relationships are not clear-cut things. Violence never has, and never will, form part of my relationship with Mrs M, so I would naturally regard any spousal violence as completely beyond the pale. But our friend Blocked Dwarf here has considerable experience of familial violence, albeit in the context of some mental instability, which he had learnt to manage as part of the ‘deal’ and for which he deserves much respect. Two very different set-ups with different approaches, both of which seem to work. I agree that the criminal law is too blunt to accommodate all the nuances of events within a relationship and it could be disproportionate for someone to be tagged with a permanent ‘criminal record’ for some momentary lapse within an emotionally charged setting. There may be a place for more forms of ‘binding over’ order, such that the perpetrator is put on notice, but without the permanently damning label of a criminal record. I don’t have the full answer, except that violence rarely is it.

@Mudplugger it could be disproportionate for someone to be tagged with a permanent ‘criminal record’ for some momentary lapse within an emotionally charged setting. My point exactly but expressed with better clarity than I have

albeit in the context of some mental instability, which he had learnt to manage as part of the ‘deal’ and for which he deserves much respect.

Some? And no. The RIGHT decision, deserving of respect,back then, would have been to have had her committed and not to have used Psychiatric ‘Black Magic’ to soldier her on through the kids’ childhoods. Only thing is, back then committing her would have left her in the hands of early 90’s ‘care’ – very Keseyesque still. I still have nightmares about the secure unit in Germany she was committed to in ’91, and i know she does too (that was the unit where I could, as her lawful wedded husband, and did get her released-under threats of The Violence ).

Apart from the usual cherry-picking of data, there’s also room for context in there somewhere.

Over thirty years together, my wife has been violent with me twice. Both times it was when she was very drunk and I had wound her up about something entirely trivial. That’s a miniscule percentage of our time together, and as as I’m twice her weight I didn’t have trouble disarming her. There is no question of her trying to harm me while I’m asleep or otherwise off-guard, if only because I generally have to be awake to annoy her.

For these two occasions, was it her fault for trying to stab me, my culpability for annoying her, or her fault for being very drunk in the first place?

Further context – the last time she tried to stab me it was with the only thing in reach, a small coffee table (to drunk to reach the kitchen). She was not hard to disarm, and I have never been frightened of her.

So am I “hen-pecked” or a “victim of violence”? It depends how you tell it, but I don’t believe so. I suspect that Ms Neate would say that she’s the victim for having to put up with “verbal abuse” in my winding her up. I’m certainly not going to leave and live in a hostel, if for no other reason that her bad behaviour does not win her a house to herself! Nor am I going to throw her out; she would struggle to look after herself, and that’s not going on my conscience.

I’m not in any kind of denial, nor am I some kind of saint for putting up with her. I just happen to be good (well practised) at dealing with this unfortunate set of circumstances.

I just happen to be good (well practised) at dealing with this unfortunate set of circumstances.

Unfortunately that well practised-ness comes at a price, sometimes an horrific price. For a long time I thought the Kids would only know their mum from the Secure Unit Visitor’s yard, the Gaol yard or the Grave Yard, because talking down a woman intent on knifing everyone so we might all be with Jesus is a fool’s move. The hand rocking the cradle and holding the knife is a very fast mobile object…

The price you pay, or rather that I paid-your situation is of course different, was realising I may well have had to kill the woman i loved, who loved her kids so much she wanted them to be safe in Heaven. Would I have been prepared to strike her a killing blow to stop her? Yes in a heart beat, the descending knife don’t pick and choose…but that realisation leaves your soul in ashes. Forever.

Her son moved out when he was 16, and she only ever drinks to excess at home (albeit five or six nights a week)

I don’t have to worry about anyone else’s safety. It’s not that I’m especially brave, more that the “domestic violence” has been too rare and too specific to bother to do anything about it.

Statistically it has happened. Practically, it’s not something I need to especially worry about. As you say, every situation is different, and most situations like this evolve in some way. That’s sort of my point, in that something that ultimately did no harm and may genuinely never happen again would still count as though there was regular and damaging domestic violence in my home.

I’m not trying to denigrate the terribleness for those who suffer the real thing; more observe that “zero tolerance” gives rise to a much higher number than a sane representation would ever count.

Sadly this is an area where “activists” are among the worst offenders in playing fast and loose with statistics. Definitions tend to be very elastic, with cherry-picked “research” lumped together and wildly extrapolated. A handful of surveys of, say, bottom-pinching and pushing and shoving in Boston, Wales and Malaysia is stirred into an assortment of crime survey data from various countries and becomes “Study shows X% of women raped and beaten up worldwide.”. The headline then gets repeated and rounded up so often that it becomes a “given that…” and cannot be challenged without seeming to be nit-picking and unsympathetic – if not an out and out “denier”.

“The defendant was given two years in prison, suspended for two years, with a 60-day rehabilitation activity requirement and a six-month alcohol treatment programme in February.

Unemployed Whittaker walked free from court again on Thursday, after admitting assaulting Mr Moss by beating him, although the suspended sentence may yet be activated at the higher court. The magistrates imposed an eight-week curfew, between 8pm and 8am. They ordered the defendant, of Fenwick Street, Burnley, to pay £100 compensation, £85 costs and an £85 victim surcharge out of her benefits.”

The bit about men having values that prevent them from hitting back is spot on in my case. My partner became violent after a civil but important disagreement about the future of our relationship. This developed from attempts to slap and bite me to hitting me at full strength with the phone handset (which bloody hurts). There is not much you can do to restrain somebody in this situation. It ended up with her stabbing me in forearm as I tried to defend my head from blows from kitchen implements. Covered in blood, I actually started to get a red hued tunnel vision as I began to lose control after a 90 minute assault. Fortunately I had the survival instinct to realise that I was about to lose control and ran out of the house. At that stage, had I have hit her, I’m pretty certain I would have not stopped until she was unconscious or dead. When later that day I returned to the house to collect some things with a relative in tow, she was gone and I never saw her again. My reward for enduring this prolonged assault without reacting, despite stab wounds, bruising and a blood covered walls, was for her to tell the world I had assaulted her! The slander of her lies surfaced some years later when a flatmate’s girlfriend was warned to steer clear of me “cos he beats up his girlfriends”

When I spotted him, ‘Baz’ was sitting morosely in the Kiddies F U N area at the pic-nic table ,swigging at a bottle of supermarket ‘sherry’, smoking and watching over his kids at their F U N. Baz was what you’d call ‘an unpleasant character’-what i’d call ‘a f*cking headcase’. A former gangland enforcer, built like the proverbial outside toilet, he towers over me and i’m a shade under 6ft in my paraboots. He has done time and was well ‘respected’ on the wing (which says something about his fighting abilities not his wise & patient counsel). He was a nasty drunk, a really nasty drunk in a town of nasty drunks & a street fighter who beat his own abusive father into a coma at age 14 or so-and his father was a prizefighter.

Me:” You look narked?”Baz: “Missus called the Cops last night on me” (Not the word he used but we have retired Policemen here). -“she is now threatening to leave me and take the kids. She said to the peelers I’d punched her in the gob” [for clarity’s sake I should add that Baz is an old school headcase, he’d gun a man down in a heartbeat if he got in his way on a ‘job’ but hit a woman?; he rather hack his own hand off. Probably cos he used to witness his dad beating the sweet crap outta his mom every Friday night]Me: *fake Norfolk accent* “Hold you hard” (Norfolk for ‘hold on a sec’)- *reverts to mockney* “you say she s a i d…on the phone, a 999 call?”Baz: “Yeah she told them I had punched her in the mouth”Me: “Remind me again how you got that scar on your right hand, that one on your knuckles?”Baz: ” Huh? You what? I pulled bits of some C*nt’s teeth out of my hand with a pair of pliers.”Me: “and you are telling me she, who can still shop in the Children’s section of Primark, t o l d the police…?”Baz: Yeah that’s what the coppers said to her when they turned up! ‘If he had hit you in the mouth not only would there be blood but we’d be arresting him for attempted murder while you were being ‘blues & toons’ to A&E’

Thing is, my point is , this happened about 10 years ago. If it happened now, the police would have had no choice but to arrest Baz & also ban him from entering the house. Despite it being clear that the woman was lying through her teeth- because she still had teeth to lie through.

Richard Felson is worth reading on this issue. Identified the Chivalric principle which inhibits men from violence against women. There is no such inhibiting norm for women although of course most wouldn’t be violent. He suggests that abusive men are more likely to have a tendency to violence in the community as well as other types of crime which is not necessarily the case for abusive women.

Another important concept to consider is Assortative Mating, this explains the high proportion of mutually violent, chaotic relationships. Basically similar types of people are attracted to each other, coupled with the fact that adverse childhood experience is best predictor of experience of domestic abuse points the way to a more effective approach to the problem.

Thankfully our approach is incrementally moving to a more informed design. The gendered analysis remains stubbornly persuasive for many, however.

isn’t nee problem here that without a rational, fact-based legal system that is prepared to both tolerate, forgive and give second chances, we just create a system whereby s/he who lies loudest, longest and especially first, wins.

I know a woman who has just lost someone she considered a very good friend because of the way she bullied, brow beat and pressurised him constantly I seen it coming (him eventually snapping and telling her to where to go), it seems to have come as a bit of a shock to her though, and now she’s trying to paint him as the one with the problem, even though it would have been obvious to anyone who seen the way they interacted that it was her that was in the wrong and his only fault there was not standing up for himself.

I also know of a woman who has been deceitful and manipulative in many relationships and has pretended to be pregnant to try and manipulate at least 2 men to go out with her after she managed to somehow get them into bed when they said, for fairly understandable reasons, that they’d rather just be friends. This woman has lied in every relationship she has had though, including to all her family and friends and basically everyone she comes in to contact with and the reason would appear to be a need for attention and sympathy and to manipulate peoples feelings and actions to her favour.

If a man behaved like this to a female partner could he go to jail for ‘coercive control’?